COLUMN LEFT/ RUTH ROSEN : Cold War’s Loss Should Be Family’s Gain : Feminists should lead the way to replace geopolitical concerns with a focus on social needs.

For more than four decades, the Cold War froze political debate about what the American family needs for its well-being. Long an icon of the “pro-family” right, the family was sacrificed to the exigencies of Cold War hysteria and military overinvestment. National health care and child care smacked of enslavement--what “they” did in the East Bloc.

With the end of the Cold War, we are entitled to an intellectual dividend. The preoccupation with communism, which has dominated American political and social thought for the last 45 years, can finally be replaced by a practical focus on meeting social needs.

Yet, to judge from recent events, American feminist organizations seem to be suffering from a failure of imagination. I note two news items: First, the Feminist Majority Foundation released a report documenting that less than 3% of women break the “glass ceiling,” the invisible barrier to the top ranks of corporate power. Then, the National Organization for Women demonstrated against the Miss California Beauty pageant in Walnut Creek.

Are these the kinds of issues that can cross class, race and age lines? Why should most American women, who live close to the poverty line, care about the few hundred women who can’t crash the corporate ceiling? The 1968 women’s liberation demonstration against the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City made the timely point that society should evaluate women for their contributions, not their appearance. In 1991, when many young women want to look like Madonna and think feminism means wearing sensible shoes and dowdy clothes, feminists should be addressing the economic and social plight of ordinary people.

Today, every industrialized democracy--with the exception of the United States and South Africa--has extensive national policies designed to protect the family. It’s time for Americans to stop dismissing the care of children, families and communities as “women’s issues”; they touch everyone’s life. With the vast majority of American women in the labor force, families cannot go it alone. Men and women should have the right to care for the young and the elderly without risking their jobs.

What, then should be the core of a new domestic feminist agenda in post-Cold War America? A legislative program to support American families and protect women’s rights. If feminism is to pass the torch to a new generation, it must address people where they juggle their precarious lives--at home and in the workplace. Electoral support should be offered to candidates who will support these policies:

-- Early childhood programs, including prenatal care and full immunization, Medicaid coverage for all children, and the expansion of Head Start to include all eligible children.

-- Quality child care for working parents.

-- Paid family leave to care for new or adopted infants and elderly parents.

-- National health care and increased research funds for women’s health problems.

-- Protection of reproductive choice, including availability of abortion and contraception.

Skeptics may wonder how such an ambitious agenda can win political support at a time when cities, states and the federal government are busy slashing budgets and programs. The answer is through decreased military spending, progressive taxes that protect the poor and the middle class and partnerships between the public and private sectors. Investing in preventive care is cost-efficient. Eighty-five percent of our social services--like prisons or drug treatment--are spent on treating preventable problems.

Yet President Bush, always in search of a kinder, gentler society, vetoed the Family Leave Act last June. Democrats, for their part, have fallen into a narcoleptic trance: None address the quiet desperation of everyday life. If they awaken, they just might succeed in competing for the loyalty of America’s families.